“SECRETARIAT” SPOOKS REVIEWERS

Catalyst November Issue 2010

Kudos to movie critic Roger Ebert, as well as to John Nolte at Breitbart.com, for lampooning Salon.com film reviewer Andrew O’Hehir’s feverish take on “Secretariat,” a movie about the famed horse that recently opened.

It wasn’t just the movie’s Christian overtones that upset O’Hehir, it’s the alleged racism—even Nazi-driven—aspects of this “honey-dipped fantasy vision of the American past” that gets his goat. Indeed, he said, “it’s legitimate to wonder exactly what Christian-friendly and ‘middle-American’ inspirational values are being conveyed here.” All this paranoia about a horse.

While O’Hehir’s review is the most apoplectic, there are others who at least share his uneasiness with all matters Christian. The Sarasota Heraldwas not happy with the movie’s “barely concealed religiosity” and “all the talk about ‘lifting up.’” The New York Times noted its “Bible-thumping” elements, while nj.com said, “the film is bookended by quotes from the book of Job, interrupted by mystical shots of clouds and sunbeams, and even has a scene where the horse gets a rubdown scored to a gospel song.” Newsday went so far as to claim that the director “insists on turning the horse into Christ himself,” and New York 1 opined “it’s a bit much” to endure “passages from the Bible and playing gospel music.” Similarly, Hollywood.com complained the film “reeks” of “grandiosity,” even to the extent of “using Old Testament quotations and gospel music.”

By contrast, CNN.com and the Los Angeles Times both noted the Christian aspects of the movie, but were wholly free of the condescending and scornful commentary that marked these other reviews.